Thoughts from the last Presidential debate:

SPECIAL NEEDS AND SCHOOL VOUCHERS
I have a special needs child who went through special education in school. She graduated from high school, is a good reader, has a job and lives almost independently. Much of this has to do with the quality of education that she received.

There is no way that one person can be both an advocate for special needs children AND for school vouchers. Most private and charter schools do not accept children with special needs. Legally, they don’t have to. Legally, public schools have to. Why would we give public money to a school that doesn’t have to accept all children?

There is a similar problem with teacher incentives. How are these incentives going to be determined? By testing scores? Then special education and resource teachers, and many ESL teachers, who may be the best of the best, would never get incentive pay.


TAXES
If Joe the plumber has a business that makes more than $250,000, and his income is $250,000 (the only type of income that Obama is proposing to tax), then I say—he needs a better accountant.

OK, all joking aside, I think things were getting mixed up—there is a difference between what a business makes and what the owner of the business makes. There are a lot of business costs that will dwindle that $250,000 gross revenue quickly.


WOMEN BUSINESS OWNERS
Why was Josephine the plumber not mentioned? We’ve addressed Joe six-pack, Joe the plumber…what about Joanna the single mother, Jill who has to find the health insurance and health care for her family, Jackie who works two jobs to make ends meet, Jessica who was passed over for a promotion and it was given to a younger man, Jana who owns her own business and is looking at having to lay off 10% of her employees, Jezebel who worked hours on a proposal and was on a winning bid for a federal government contract job but the prime contractor ended up doing her portion of the work in-house, or June who can’t get a business loan because she was late on some of her cancer treatment payments. (Regards to the Women’s Media Center for prompting these thoughts).